Moviefone News Moviefone Copyright 2011, HuffingtonPost.com, Inc. Moviefone Good old fashioned elbow grease. <![CDATA[Bring the Kyrgyz 65 Children Home: An International Adoption Nightmare]]>
Tonight, there's a 3-and-a-half-year-old toddler who will sleep without the love, protection and goodnight kisses of his parents. His name is Ruslan, and he has been living in an orphanage in his native Kyrgyzstan since he was three days old, despite the tireless efforts of his adoptive parents, Frances and Drew Pardus-Abbadessa to bring him home to New York City.

The couple first held Ruslan when he was seven months old in 2008, and were approved for his adoption, but because of a Kafkaesque process that has been painfully drawn out, the couple continues to fight to be united with Ruslan.

And the long passage of days to months to years has been especially difficult for the Pardus-Abbadessas, because Ruslan is visibly suffering; he's been diagnosed with a "failure to thrive" physically and mentally; in the past year, he hasn't grown at all. And when Ruslan turns 4, he will be transferred to an older orphanage which could make him vulnerable to abuse from older kids.

And this is just one of many families stuck in a confounding nightmare -- there are five dozen others in the same situation, having all been approved to adopt Kyrgyz orphans, but unable to. The families have united to fight for their children, dubbed the Kyrgyz 65, and even though their hopes have been revived and dashed numerous times, they now finally feel that their struggle could soon be coming to a happy end. But not without a last, strong push that will call for a coordinated effort from both the U.S. State Department and the Kyrgyzstan government.

The chronology of events that has led up to this point is maddeningly Byzantine, but the main cause has been fits, detours, stops and starts within Kyrgyzstan policy and a seeming lack of priority from the US State Department. The country, which used to be part of the Soviet Union and borders China, is struggling, recently resorting to the sacrifice of seven sheep to clear its parliament of evil spirits in April. The government had put a one-year moratorium on adoptions soon after many of the American families had been approved. Kyrgyzstan has quite appropriately been concerned that its children do not fall victim to trafficking or other forms of abuse. But since the official lift of the ban, there's been little movement, and while policy has been reviewed, the government has gone through cycles of power transfer, which has caused further delays.

But, according to the American families, all of the proposed reviews have been completed; even the original birth families have been double checked for approval, and yet, still, Kyrgyzstan declines to let the children go.

Tragically, two of the children have died during the delays due to lack of the proper medical attention. Already, some of the American families are tending to the ailments of their Kyrgyzstan children -- about half of whom have serious medical conditions, but these kids are clearly at risk.

"We have great admiration for the parents for their courage and their resilience for remaining so true to these children for so long," says Ambassador Susan Jacobs, the Special Advisor for Children's Issues.

A State Department official also tells me that Ambassador Jacobs and U.S. Ambassador to Kyrgyzstan Pamela Spratlen have "repeatedly" tried to get the matter resolved "as quickly as possible." They most recently met with officials from Kyrgyzstan, including the Foreign Minister on June 10th. Both sides hope to finalize a memorandum of understanding (MOU) that is needed to permit the pending adoptions to be completed. "We're doing everything we can to unite these children with their adoptive parents in the United States," says Ambassador Jacobs.

That sounds great; there have been indications that Secretary of State Clinton has been giving attention to the issue, but words and intentions are what the families have been hearing for years. What counts is getting things done. Discussions on the MOU began two years ago with work on the MOU going on for nearly a year.

But, still, Pardus-Abbadessa is not willing to cast blame. She doesn't even want to target Kyrgyz officials. Although she will say that there's a "lack of political will on their side," what is most slowing things down is mistrust: the Kyrgyz are truly perplexed that American families want these ailing children so badly.

Specifically, what the American parents want is to get that memorandum of understanding completed, and for U.S. representatives to go to Kyrgyzstan to hold negotiations similar to those recently completed in Russia before August, when the government slows down.

The State Department official tells me that a delegation, including Ambassador Susan Jacobs, plans to visit Kyrgyzstan in the fall. This is important, because the current Kyrgyz government will go through elections this fall and another transition of power at the beginning of next year, when everything may move back two spaces -- yet again. "We are committed to finding a path agreeable to the Kyrgyz to move forward on these cases," the State Department official says.

As a parent myself, it's impossible to fully understand what these families have been going through. Pardus-Abbadessa and her husband had hoped to adopt an infant, but now he is a toddler. At Ruslan's third birthday, she was disturbed at how quiet and reserved the children behaved. What every parent wants is to see their children thrive and feel joy. So, during several visits spanning more than two years, they have brought him gifts and books and vitamins, but it's all piecemeal.

"You feel powerless," Pardus-Abbadessa says. "This has been an emotional roller coaster. It's been absolutely horrible. Now we are the most hopeful, but we still don't know."

She clearly respects Kyrgyzstan's desire to reform its adoption process, but it is just common sense to let the Kyrgyz 65 go to their families immediately. As we can see with our own government's torn and conflicting agenda: where there's a will, there's a way.

To be powerless as a parent, being unable to care for one's suffering children, is perhaps the greatest cruelty a mother or father could endure, I'd think. For now, the Pardus-Abbadessas do what they can. Drew just recently returned from Washington D.C., where he and other Kyrgyz 65 families were meeting with members of Congress.

And yet, every night, the Pardus-Abbadessas know that Ruslan sleeps with a laminated photograph of himself and them together, under his pillow. Is that fact equally on the minds of the people with the power to get things done? How much longer must he cling to this laminated substitute for loving parents?

If that doesn't move governments to action, what will?

For more information, go to the Kyrgyz 65 website (http://thewaiting65.blogspot.com) or their Facebook page (http://www.facebook.com/kyrgyz65.

]]> Mon, 8 Aug 2011 15:30:46 EDT 904985 <![CDATA[Surviving That First Crazy Week of Motherhood]]>
All moms (and dads, too) have war stories of just how whacked out things can get. But for this Mother's Day, let's hear from four moms (names have been changed) who told me their stories. If you want to share your experience of your first week, post a comment below.

Joanne: My son had been in the Intensive Care Unit for ten days. About a week after he came home, I'll admit, I was a little anxious. I was wondering, "Is he OK? Should he be home? Were the doctors right that he could be released?"

My husband had gone to work. I had been eating a bowl of cherries. Not just a few, but like a whole bowl. And there was a thunderstorm. There was a crash of thunder and I went to check on our son. I saw these foamy bubbles coming out of his mouth. I thought he wasn't breathing.

I called the pediatrician's office, but they weren't there. I picked him up and ran down the street in the rain to the hospital. I was completely disconnected.

I ran into the ambulance bay. I told them he wasn't breathing, that he wasn't okay. They took him to the pediatric emergency room. And then I started to vomit. I vomited for hours. And, because of the cherries, they thought I was bleeding. I was incoherent. I felt like no one was listening to me. So my son was in the pediatric side and they took me to the adult side, and my husband was running between us.

My son was fine, but they kept him overnight. I went home.

He had probably been having the best sleep ever. This was so outside how I normally live my life. It was irrational panic. I think I was so overwhelmed from being a mom. But the incident snapped me back to being me. It allowed me to find my center.

Chloe: My husband and I were undecided if we wanted anyone to be at our home the first week. We originally thought we were going to be alone, but then when my parents came to my apartment and they saw that everything was upside down, my mom stayed on that week. My mom and I were getting along pretty well, but on the third day, things started to build up.

There is vulnerability, a helplessness, especially when you have a c-section, as I did. It's like, okay, now I am a mom. But my mom is there -- and I turn into a baby.

Things began building up. The pediatrician said we didn't need to bathe the baby so soon but in the morning, there's my mom bathing him.

And then, that same night, while the baby was sleeping, my mom was cooking dinner. One of our cats jumped on the counter and was trying to get into the food. My mom chased him under the table and then she picked him up by the tail. I absolutely lost it. I felt that that was the last boundary to be broken. I flew off the handle. She was hurt and embarrassed, and I went into the bedroom with the cat and the baby.

Just then, our elderly neighbor came to see the baby. It was really not the right time, but while I was talking about it with my husband, my mom walked out. She just left. Dinner was ready, the table was set, but my mom disappeared. There was no note. I ran out into the street to look for her until my husband brought me back home.

After a few hours, my mom returned. She said she went to a movie. I lost it again. We had an even bigger meltdown.

It was all so intense. I felt very protective about my family. And the baby slept through all of it.

Gillian: They released us from the hospital and we were, like, singing. We weren't there long, and things were going well. And then, the first night, everything went wrong. Henry began chewing on me.

We weren't sure what the problem was. Was it a bad latch? I wasn't sure if his mouth was too big or too small. I was shooting from the hip. The latch seemed fine in the hospital. Everything had been great.

So I called a lactation specialist. And then another. But it was Murphy's Law: none of them were in town. That weekend, there was a lactation specialist convention somewhere and they had all left. I called eight, but we were on our own.

I was crying, having a fit. My mother didn't breastfeed me so she didn't know what to do. Of course, my husband didn't know. He went MacGyver and tried to create a contraption that would allow Henry to latch. He used adhesive, a nipple shield and a jerry-rigged nylon stocking stretched taught. He got it all at CVS. But it didn't work.

So then I began pumping, but I was bleeding so much after the baby had chewed on me. There was blood in the milk. But the breast milk was like gold. It was sacred. So I would pump, and then I would let the blood settle to the bottom of the bottle, maybe a quarter of an inch of blood, and then I would skim the milk from the top and throw out the blood.

It was complete comedy. I was crying hysterically and then laughing.

Miranda: After the cocoon of the hospital, it felt like we were spit out into this frightening world. It was the middle of winter, and it felt to me like the coldest day of the year.

When we got home, our cat looked to me like a monster. She looked like a lion. I was thinking, "Get her away from my daughter!" Our apartment heat was very erratic, so I was cold. And Eve wasn't eating yet. My milk was not coming in and she was crying and I started to think, "How are we going to feed this child?"

I didn't think about formula. I had been nervous about formula. And I was under the influence of exhaustion, fear, insecurity and insanity.

So, I'm thinking she's going to freeze to death, and she's not eating. It was just panic. And then my husband, Caleb, went into escape mode. He's a computer consultant and he just went to his computer to work. I got really mad at him. And I began crying. And then Caleb started crying. We were both crying on the couch.

We called his stepmother because she's a nurse. She calmed us down a little. And because Caleb and I are arguing about whether it's too hot or too cold, we asked my sister to buy thermometers to gauge the temperature in the apartment. She had just had her first child three months before, so she raised the possibility that she could breast feed Eve, but we agreed that neither one of us could afford the cost of therapy for doing that.

So, as our family started filling up our one-bedroom apartment, I started feeling reassured. And, of course, as soon as I was calm and could drink and my blood pressure went down, that night, my milk came in.

I was in a half-sleep state, feeding the baby, when I began hallucinating because she was feeding from me like this beast. She was so hungry. And I hallucinated that she was this animal morphing between a hyena and a baby. It was bizarre. But it was then that I began to realize she could fend for herself.

]]> Sat, 8 May 2010 13:05:33 EDT 568416 <![CDATA[How Does a Genius Spend $500,000?]]>
On Tuesday, the MacArthur Foundation announces the 2009 recipients of the MacArthur Fellowship, otherwise known as the "genius grant." Each year, about twenty or so innovative thinkers, artists, scientists, doctors and musicians are chosen for outstanding work in their respective fields. In addition to the accolades and increase in credibility, there's the not so insignificant detail of a no-strings-attached grant of $500,000 paid to the chosen ones, distributed in quarterly installments over five years.

Not being a genius, and, in fact, being rather shallow and self-centered at times, I've asked myself how I would spend that money. Which leads to a much more interesting query: how do geniuses spend $500,000? Do they invest in underperforming foos-ball teams? Or, are they, like, smart about it?

I asked -- and this is what they said.

My organization, GeoHazards International, works in developing countries to promote earthquake safety in the most vulnerable communities. And I thought it would be so neat to introduce my kids to what the rest of the world is like. I wanted them to see India, Central Asia and Turkey. So when I got the fellowship, my wife and I decided that she would take a leave of absence, home school them, and we would take the family and travel the world where I work. It was our year on the road.


For GeoHazards International, our annual budget is something like a million dollars. So, actually, the $500,000, after deductions, spread out over five years, wasn't so significant. Let's say if I were a poet and all I needed was a pencil, I could go to some cave and then write for five years. Then, the money would be a huge thing.

-- Brian Tucker, Seismologist (2001)


We took some nice vacations, which we might not have done. We went to Hilton Head -- nothing too extravagant. Mainly, I used it to buy a house when we moved to MIT. It's not a huge house, but it's a nice house.

--Peter Shor, Computer Scientist (1999)

We primarily used it for our kids' education. They are young, so it's toward their future college. A little bit went for research but my lab is very well funded. And then a little bit went to travel for a trip to Wyoming. My wife and I are fortunate that we have jobs that we love to do and that pay us well.


-- Jim Collins, Bioengineer (2003)


It gave us the money to use leverage to set up a center for short wavelength science and engineering. We are developing technologies that form the basis of microscopes that function at the very limits of resolution, space and time.

You want to follow your dreams. When you are lying on your deathbed, it's not the things you do but it's the things you don't do that you regret. And the MacArthur gives you the means to do that.

And my husband and I also helped our parents do some needed things for their houses and such.

--Margaret Murnane, Optical Physicist (2000)

I put it back into the farm, and some of the programs we provide, bringing food to low-income communities. Basically, I want to feed the world.


-- Cheryl Rogowski, Farmer (2004)


It's not all spent! I'm about halfway through my fellowship, so I still have half of the money yet to come. At this time, my main financial obligations are centered on the fact that I have three kids in college at one time. So, the fellowship has meant I've gone less into debt than I otherwise would have.

The biggest impact of the fellowship was to have me imagine new possibilities for my work of getting Silicon Valley more engaged in helping global society. Here's a partial list of new things I've been doing: Working hard on my book; International trips to Tamil Nadu (India), Ecuador, Japan, Europe and so on; Got a really good digital SLR camera and lenses, and have been taking lots of pictures of people I've met and places I've been; And, my local public radio station was having a pledge drive when the fellowship was announced, and challenged me to give some of it to the pledge drive (cheeky, but public radio needs to be cheeky)! As a long-time annual supporter of the station, I stepped up and provided a $1000 matching challenge grant for that drive.

The Fellowship money didn't pay for all of these new things, but it was the catalyst for most of this.

--Jim Fruchterman, Technologist (2006)

Some on a research trip to the ancient Silk Road, some on a grand piano, some on the down payment of my house. But what the fellowship also brought along was the recognition by colleagues and peers. And, most importantly, the encouragement for what I have done and the courage for [what] I will be doing.


--Bright Sheng, Composer (2001)


As a civil rights lawyer, I felt very strongly that the money should be shared because the work of fighting for basic rights and developing a vision and a strategy for achieving a more just world are collaborative efforts, you are best at it when you are part of a team. So the first thing I did was donate a portion of the money to a number of organizations that work for racial and economic justice in the Asian American and other communities.

The other thing the money did is it gave my husband the push to leave the private sector and become a public interest lawyer, too. When you get a $25,000 check with no strings attached every quarter for 5 years, it frees you to make big decisions that can change the course of your life.

Finally, I set up education accounts for our daughters, so they can go to college without worrying about paying for it and without being restricted by debt from following their dreams.

--Julie A. Su, Civil Right Lawyer (2001)

First, I took a year off, and negotiated for a reduced teaching load for the duration of the award. Our son was approaching college age; so we did not have to look at taking out loans, an enormous relief as I am keenly debt-averse. The rest was earmarked by the feds.


Many people think poets don't live in the same economy; that we can live indefinitely under the radar or that we are supposed to live marginally. The poets I know are also full-time employees, parents and taxpayers; people with illnesses and disabilities, and individuals beset with longings for travel or further study or opportunities for experience.

The first time I won an award was $10,000 from the NEA. I thought I was nouveau riche. I quit my job and moved to Mexico. In my mid-fifties this was not an option.

--C.D. Wright, Poet (2004)






]]> Tue, 22 Sep 2009 09:44:59 EDT 294567 <![CDATA[The Real Reason the Birthers Don't Like Obama]]>
1) Walking through Honolulu International Airport, one repeatedly hears people refer to the flight to the mainland as "going to America."
2) The McDonalds there serve rice and spam.
3) There are those native Hawaiians who still claim that their land was illegally annexed, and therefore Hawaii is an illegitimate state.
4) The street names have way too many vowels; just try saying, "Kalanianaole Highway."
5) The health care system covers more than 95% of its residents. Does that sound like America?
6) You can watch NFL football games -- live -- at 8am on Sunday mornings.
7) It's the only state that grows coffee. (Suspiciously, Kenya is also a major exporter of coffee.)
8) Hawaii's population is 55% Asian. Does that sound like America?
9) Obama himself once mistakenly said that there were 57 states, so even he is a little insecure about this whole notion of there being 50 states.
10) At least Alaska has Sarah Palin and oil; now, that's America.

Tom Roston is a journalist who writes the blog, Doc Soup, on PBS's POV documentary website. His work has appeared in The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Elle, Spin, The Hollywood Reporter, New York, and other publications. He lives in Brooklyn. You can email him at troston@gmail.com.]]> Sat, 15 Aug 2009 10:42:34 EDT 260312